


Old Wounds

by WetSammyWinchester



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Appalachian Magic, Curses, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Episode: s13e19 Funeralia, Protective Dean Winchester, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-18 09:52:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16992762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WetSammyWinchester/pseuds/WetSammyWinchester
Summary: “In a sense, there is no such thing as healing. From paper cuts to surgical scars, our bodies are catalogues of wounds; imperfectly locked doors quietly waiting, sooner or later, to spring back open.”~ Infinite Exchange by Geoff Manaugh.Sam didn’t expect to face his past this way—one old scar surfacing after the other across his body—and the one person who might be able to break the curse is the one person who should want Sam dead.





	Old Wounds

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to the Wincest Big Bang mods and my artist Millygal for staying with me and letting us post late to the collection. Their patience when real life threw me a wicked curveball was amazing. [Check out Millygal’s amazing art masterpost here!](https://milly-gal.livejournal.com/2042637.html)
> 
> Thanks to [nigeltde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nigeltde/pseuds/nigeltde) and [alulaspeaks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlulaSpeaks/pseuds/AlulaSpeaks) \- your support and time on this means the world to me - and a shout out to all the others on discord who helped cheerlead this fic. Wouldn’t have finished it without your help!

_~~~_

_“Let me tell you a story.” The old lady stirs the pot on the stove and doesn’t glance in Sam’s direction. “It starts with two brothers. It ends with two brothers.”_

_~~~_

It’s hours to Cincinnati and the air conditioning isn’t working. Dean says it is, but the air from the vents is musty and warm, and a trickle of sweat has started down Sam’s neck. 

He normally doesn’t complain. But this drive coming down from the late spring frost of the Smoky Mountains and ending up in the heat of a Tennessee afternoon seems to have caught up with him and he can feel the ache of a summer cold starting to build.

They’ve been down this road a few times but he can’t remember the last time. Dean likes to take Highway 25 so that they can stop at that little diner in White Pine. It’s a nice drive, prettier than some, but Sam’s tired.

He rubs at the bridge of his nose, trying to ease the headache that’s building there. Pain flares behind one eyelid, flashing red and white as he pushes in.

“You okay?”

Dean’s eyes are still on the road but he knows every move that Sam makes.

“What? Yeah, no, I’m fine.” He shifts in the seat, staring out the window at the dark and light flickers of the passing scenery. In this part of Tennessee, there are a few firs mixed in with yellow birch and white ash. Pretty leaves but the trees grow thin here like flagpoles instead of Christmas trees. 

“Sam, I know she was an old lady but—”

“Yeah, I know.” The migraine sparks behind his right eye and he slouches down in the seat, too tired to take any pills. “Think I’ll get some sleep.”

~~~

Sleep only makes things worse.

In his dream, Sam is paralyzed, pinned against a tree and the smell of moss and decay makes him want to gag. He needs to get away but the dirty fog that creeps between the trees climbs over the rocks and into his mouth, choking him. He can hear Dean talking - the voice floating like a beacon through the fog - but he can’t move or respond. Sam tries to yell out a warning to Dean but his vocal chords are frozen and it takes him a few seconds to claw his way awake.

“Sam. C’mon.” Dean is shaking him by the shoulder. “I’m starving.” 

_~~~_

_A hand-carved pine rocker rolls from front to back to front again, painfully slow across the dirty boards; the tiny lady in it smiles as she reads the small book in her hands. He watches her from the safety of the treeline and glances at his phone. No service. Not a surprise this far into the woods._

_~~~_

He blinks a last bit of his dream away, and once again he’s in front of a touristy diner advertising the best grits and red-eyed gravy and the biggest burger in Tennessee. 

Up in Jackson Cove, they saw the real thing. Backwoods cabins that were mossy and damp, logs chinked together messily with clay or mortar, not built to last much more than a generation but end up standing in place for three. Buildings where the leaves and branches seem to be half eating them, half nourishing them.

At the diner entrance, Dean whacks him in the chest and raises his eyebrows at Sam’s confused face. “You awake?”

“I’m up. Coffee sounds good.”

Ten minutes later, Dean is halfway through his scrambled eggs and a second cup of coffee.

“You should be more careful,” he says and waves at Sam’s face with his fork.

Sam frowns and runs a fingertip along his cheekbone in absent curiosity to find three fresh scars that sting. When he pulls the fingers back, a smudge of red shows on the tip. He looks across the table at Dean, his brow wrinkled as he tries to remember when he got scratched on the hunt. 

Dean shakes his head with a smile. “Man, those monsters love to scrape up that pretty face of yours.” Sam scowls and goes back to tracing the edges, his coffee forgotten as Dean digs back into his eggs. “Don’t sweat it. We’ll put something on it when we get outside.”

~~~

They catch a case in Cincinnati on their way home. 

A teenage girl is haunting her family’s old house, terrorizing the new tenants after her parents died. Because she was reported missing, there is no grave or remains and no other family to ask. 

Their first call was the retired cop who worked the original missing person’s case. His captain back in the day was friendly with the family, and the official story was she ran away. The case was closed. 

The old cop kicks back in his Laz-e-Boy recliner. “Kid had a full-ride scholarship and only a few weeks before she left,” he says as he points his cigarette at the notes, the ash falling over the xeroxed sheets.

A picture is attached to the top of the file and looks like Molly Ringwald, with bouncy red hair, big blue eyes and cute freckles. “Dad was a mean drunk. What I can’t figure out is—” he takes a long drag on the cigarette “—if she wanted to get away, why wouldn’t she wait to leave for school? You ask me, and you two are, I don’t think she ever left that house.”

Another basement to dig out, another set of bones to find, and another sad story that turns ugly. 

They’ve done this so many times. Sam sighs as he leans on his shovel to rest. He stretches the fingers of his left hand which aches with effort. His scratched face itches and he hopes it doesn’t get infected by the dirt and mouse turds in the crawl space.

“Hey, why don’t you take a break?” Dean says, sawed-off shotgun hanging loosely at his side.

“Naw, let’s just finish this.”

“Here,” he says, handing Sam the gun and taking the shovel out of his hands. “I’ll dig. You watch out for Sixteen Candles when she pops up.”

Sam rolls his eyes but is grateful to stop. Dirt-floored sub-basements like this are the worst. The ceiling is too low to stand up and the ground is scattered with dead rodents and live spiders. The more they dig, the more it smells like death. 

When the ghost appears, it’s no different than any other case. Sam raises the shotgun but pauses because she seems less angry spirit and more like a lost child. He freezes up. The ghost looks at Dean who stands over her bones and then turns to Sam. 

_Everyone knew_ she whispers to him. _You all knew and did nothing._ She shrieks and rushes Dean, knocking him on his ass before Sam finally fires at her.

“Dammit, Sam.” Dean grits his teeth as he dusts off his jeans. He digs in the nearby duffel for lighter fluid and a pack of matches from a strip club three states back. 

The girl’s ghost appears again but evaporates in a ball of flame seconds later as Dean tosses the match into the hole. He throws the supplies back in the duffel with a grunt. “You’re off today, Sammy. Get your shit together.”

_~~~_

_The old woman stands over the cast-iron stove. She doesn’t turn when Sam slides through the open door behind her, gun held at the ready. There’s a crook of a smile in her profile and a smell of onions in the frying pan. “It’s blackberry winter, boy. Think I didn’t hear you tromping through that skift of snow?”_

_~~~_

He starts awake. His cheek is cold from where it pressed against the passenger window. Dragging a hand over his face, he curls a knuckle in the corner of his eye to rub the tired out but he can’t do much about the exhaustion that sits like a thick blanket over his muscles and bones. 

There’re a couple of protein bar wrappers on the seat next to him and an empty coffee cup on the floorboards that weren’t there when he went to sleep. 

“You passed out.” There’s a question behind Dean’s words and Sam straightens up in the seat and notices how low the sun hangs in the sky.

“Guess I should be glad I didn’t wake up with a spoon in my mouth this time.”

Dean grunts and changes the radio station. “We’re about two hours out from home.”

Before they had the Bunker, the time between cases was like connective tissue holding together the bones of the cases they worked. The wheels of the Impala would turn constantly. They would stop for gas and food and sleep, only to arrive at the next town. Sometimes they would detour to Bobby’s, or later, maybe Jody’s, but the wheels were always in motion. 

He doesn't sleep like he did as a kid with his face pressed flat against the sun-warmed leather of the back seat, curled up under his dad’s coat. There was a rhythm to those trips. Through the drowsiness, he would listen to the welcome buzz of Dad switching the radio dial past the religious stations and Top Forty to something with more guitar licks and bass beats, all the while quizzing Dean on monsters. 

Now, as they point toward home, Sam finds himself restless. The drive is too long; the hours are silent with Dean focused on the road ahead. His brother’s been driving two-lane state highways through the Midwest since he was fourteen. Dad taught Dean to drive early — the need for backup outweighed any concerns — and his brother was a pro by the age of fifteen. Dean would spell Dad for a few hours while Dad would write notes in his journal or catch a few hours of sleep. No need for Sam to learn before he was sixteen, not with Dad and Dean forming a tightly efficient team of two.

Sam scratches his forearm and wrestles open his laptop, balancing it on his thighs. He sits for a few minutes, trying to remember what he wanted to do, before folding it back up and sticking it in his bag. 

_~~~_

_“Son,” the old lady says. “You think you know family problems but you know nothing about this family.” She turns to face him and there is no hate there for the hunter, just resignation._

_~~~_

Dean negotiates the narrow entrance leading into the Bunker garage and switches off the ignition. The two of them sit listening to the soft tick-tick of the engine as it cools down.

“Home, sweet home,” Dean says. He glances out the windshield at the cars parked around them but doesn’t make a move to get out. “Think I’ll wash off the T-bird. Maybe take it out for a drive.”

Sam shakes his head. Hundreds of miles driven today and Dean still has more in him. Even after five years, the Bunker feels new to him. While Dean loves his room and cooking in the kitchen, Sam still feels transient, ready to pick up at a moment’s notice. 

He wonders if Dean has a different kind of restlessness, if his cells naturally vibrate with a need to move or if that is just a product of the way they grew up. As he gets out of the car, he rolls his shoulders and neck where they’re stiff and scratches at his forearm before grabbing the duffel out of the trunk. 

Maybe a quick shower and a nap before they eat tonight will get him out of this funk.

~~~

When he wakes, his watch says six o’clock. He wanders down the hallway to the kitchen, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, looking for dinner and Dean, but the kitchen is dark and clean; any sign of dinner is long gone. He scratches his head and turns on the tap for a glass of water, drinking and listening for his brother, wondering if they have any cold medicine left in the infirmary. 

They’ve developed their own rhythms in the Bunker, a luxury that they could never indulge in with motel rooms growing up. There are times when their paths don’t cross for hours, but there is a security in knowing that Dean is right around the corner somewhere.

As Sam set his water glass down, the silence is broken by the tick-tick of the air circulation system restarting and the quiet push of air out of the vents and for the first time, he feels unbalanced by being underground. He studies his watch again and 6:12 AM shines in green on its face.

Fifteen hours asleep? Last time that happened was the Trials and he pushes that memory to the side. It’s just the start of a cold, and if he was being honest, he could sleep for fifteen more. Instead, he wanders over to the coffee maker and begins his morning ritual of opening the bag of coffee grounds and starting a fresh pot while he pulls out a bowl and a box of corn flakes. The smell of the coffee revives him a bit and he grabs his mug and his bowl to head to the library to spend some time filing information on their last few cases and get a start on a new case.

~~~

An hour later, Dean sidles up to his shoulder, sipping coffee and looking at the laptop screen.

“Anything good?”

Sam types and Google autocompletes “unusual death”. There’s nothing new on the list. He clears the search and types in “suspicious death” before itching his forearm. 

“You sacked out yesterday,” Dean says and Sam shrugs. He scratches again at his arm and Dean leans down.

“What is that? Did you burn yourself?” Dean sounds irritated and concerned and Sam looks down when Dean grabs his wrist and twists it. A thick reddish-brown stripe is smeared across the tender skin of Sam’s forearm and he stares at the mark. The skin is discolored and slightly puckered. A burn. His mind searches back over the hours since they came back. Drive, unpack, shower, sleep, breakfast - that’s all he’s done in the past day. The mark wasn’t there after the hunt and it wasn’t there in the shower last night but he’s felt off-center and the skin on his arm has been itchy, like needles poking him, since they left West Virginia.

When Sam doesn’t respond, Dean bumps his shoulder. “Sam? What’s going on?”

He continues to stare at it, dark against his pale skin. A memory scratches at the back of his mind, and as he closes his eyes, he can feel the weight of a wrench in his hand and hear Jess’s voice behind him cursing a blue streak while he tries to shut off a pipe. “It’s an old burn?” 

“What does that mean?” Dean says. He doesn’t release Sam and Sam doesn’t pull away. “An old burn? I don’t remember that.” 

“From my old apartment.” He opens his eyes to see Dean’s face screwed up in thought. They don’t talk much about Stanford, except the occasional throwaway comment about classes or some piece of trivia that Sam shares. But nothing about his life there. How he and Jess decided to live together after drinking too much wine one night. How they looked at five apartments that were within walking distance to campus. How they had to choose one that wasn’t outside the reach of his scholarship stipend and had room enough for her art supplies. The apartment was old and the landlord didn’t respond much to the college kids’ complaints so when the old radiator broke down in the middle of January, Sam tried to fix. Jess thought the radiator was quaint after living in modern homes with central heating. She didn’t know what to do with a busted pipe, how dangerous they could be. Sam knew but tried anyway, burning his forearm in the process.

Dean raises his eyebrows, waiting for more explanation, and Sam tries to clear his cobwebs away. “The apartment I shared with Jess. A radiator that I tried to fix before it flooded the place.”

“Bob Vila, you ain’t,” Dean says. His fond smile makes Sam scowl and he yanks his wrist away. Dad and Dean both had the fix-it genes—cars, appliances, plumbing—but Sam was no slouch either. On his own in California and Texas, he made extra money from being a handyman. 

When he tries to roll down his flannel sleeve to cover the mark, Dean snags it one more time. “Wait, this happened at Stanford? And I’ve never seen it?”

The brown of the skin is shiny like plastic wrap, as if it’s still new, and Sam’s chest tightens up because that was thirteen years ago and there’s no way this is the same scar.

“Maybe it’s something else.”

“Okay.” Dean drops Sam’s arm and hesitates before moving on. “What’d ya want for dinner tonight? I could make something—lasagne?”

“Yeah, sure.” 

As Dean leaves the library, Sam starts a new Google search on his laptop.

~~~

“Did you get any sleep last night?” 

The next morning comes too soon and despite his fatigue, Sam hasn’t slept. Dean eyes the open laptop as he sweeps back in wearing his grey robe like he just came out of the steam shower at a day spa. 

Sam hums back a non-answer and feels the soft wool rub against his back as Dean leans in and rubs his shoulder. Between the body aches and dreams of hunts, he didn’t get much rest. The warmth of Dean’s body where it’s pressed up behind him lulls him into closing his eyes and he breathes in the smell of Dean’s Ivory soap.

“Scurvy?” Dean says with a snort, looking down at the laptop screen. “Are we going after some pirates? Seriously, Sam, ghost pirates would be awesome.”

Time was he would be annoyed by Dean’s intrusion, his bad jokes, but in small moments like this, all he wants is to crawl into bed and fall asleep next to Dean and smell his damp, clean comfort.

“Sorry, no pirates this time.”

When he doesn’t say anything more, Dean pulls back and moves into Sam’s side view. Dean sips from his coffee but his eyes are on Sam’s face as he sits on the edge of the library table. “Gonna tell me or do I have to guess?”

“What?”

Dean pulls the edge of his robe over his knees. “Scurvy?”

“Did you know that scurvy can cause old wounds to open up again? Collagen binds our bodies together. But scurvy means no collagen, and no collagen means that your body falls apart—wounds reopen, bones rebreak.”

Dean glances at Sam’s burn and his brow scrunches up even more. “So you think it’s scurvy?”

“No, no, I _know_ it’s not scurvy.” Sam sighs. “That would be ridiculous. Just trying to figure this out.”

“Did you touch one of the curse boxes down in storage?”

He rolls his eyes. “Of course not.” Dean shrugs and Sam thinks about curses more. How most of them work fast. Their victims lose their memories, their minds or their lives while someone else benefits from it. Others take their time. But in most cases, someone benefits. “Could that old witch have something to do with this?”

“The hag back in West Virginia?” Dean says and scratches a spot behind his ear. “How? She’s dead.”

“Yeah, I know.” Sam nods but doesn’t say anymore and Dean eyes him, waiting for the rest of the discussion.

The silence starts to stretch and Dean jumps back in. “Maybe you just need to take your vitamins.”

“Ha ha, this from a guy whose only nutrition comes from ground beef and processed cheese.”

Dean stands and cinches his robe primly in response before walking out, and Sam smiles fondly at his back before he looks at the laptop screen again. 

The blog onscreen is from a naval historian who talks about sailors and disease, and the thin-lined sketches were done by a ship’s doctor in his journal from the voyage. The illustrations show a man’s calf with deep bruising and then a stretch of skin where strange teardrops of blood are leaking from open wounds. Scurvy sounds right on paper but doesn’t jibe. He and Dean might not have the healthiest diet but there’s no lack of vitamin C. Instead something gnaws at the edge of his thoughts as he reads the words again — old wounds — but when he reaches out to yank that string of thought, it vanishes.

He googles the phrase and finds another paper on scurvy. _“In a sense, there is no such thing as healing. From paper cuts to surgical scars, our bodies are catalogues of wounds; imperfectly locked doors quietly waiting, sooner or later, to spring back open.”_

The fine hairs on his forearm rise as he reads it over a second time.

The book of Sam’s scars is not one he wants to read again.

“Sam! Breakfast!” 

Dean’s words and the smell of fresh coffee and breakfast reach him as he reads the passage again for the fourth time before shutting down the search. 

The table is already set as he walks in the kitchen and Sam smiles at the large glass of orange juice sitting by his plate. He takes a sip as Dean brings over a plate overflowing with pancakes and nods at Sam to dig in.

_~~~_

_The butcher block in the witch’s kitchen is clean but there are rust-colored stains that can’t be scrubbed out. A small doll sits on the wooden surface. It’s old and worn and riddled with needles. It could fit inside his palm but he won’t touch it—he knows better. Goosebumps run up his forearms. He motions at the doll with his gun . “Is this what you used to kill those men?”_

_“It’s not how you think, boy.” The old woman’s laugh is brittle and her eyes sparkle black like a sparrow’s. “I use the needles to mend damaged things that need fixin’. That’s all. Clothing, bedding, people.” Her tongue seemed to slither over the last word and Sam grimaces as it darts out to wet her lips._

_~~~_

Another day passes before Dean throws himself into the canteen seat across from Sam. His face is somber. When Dean is upset, he jokes, he gets angry, he squawks noisily at arguments. When Dean becomes guarded, Sam’s insides twist in uncertainty. Sam keeps peeling the orange in his hand but stops halfway through, setting it on the table with a sigh, too tired for something that simple.

“So, I was doing some research of my own last night,” Dean starts and then pauses.

“That’s never good.”

“Ha, ha.” Dean taps the top of his coffee cup with one finger. “Talking about scurvy got me thinking about other crazy stuff. Disease stuff. Like polio. Remember Dad telling us about that uncle of his who got polio?” When Sam looks bewildered, Dean continues. “He survived and lived to an old age but the problem was, it came back around in his eighties. Guy could barely walk without a cane.”

“There hasn’t been a case of polio since 1979,” Sam says. “And its symptoms—”

“Not the point, Sam. Sometimes sicknesses like that come back a second time. Like chickenpox and shingles. Sort of a sadistic double whammy.” He takes a sip of his coffee, looking over the rim at Sam who is still lost as to where this tangent is heading. “What if this is an after-effect of the Trials? You’re older now—“

“Five years older, not fifty.” 

Sam’s stomach rolls and he lays the orange section down on his plate as Dean watches him and waits. Memories of the Trials are tucked away like Pandora’s box in his mind and he hasn’t cracked open that lid to look in a long time. He runs through the catalog of his current aches and pains comparing it to those months of sickness before he notices that Dean is still waiting and examining every corner of his face. Whether Dean is looking for more physical scars or whether Sam is just cracking up, he can’t tell and he’s not in the mood to be a specimen under the microscope right now.

“We need to figure this out,” Dean says. “You’re not getting better.”

Sam pushes back from the table and stands up, swaying a bit, and Dean extends a hand to steady him but Sam steps back and wipes the sticky juice from the orange on his jeans.

“As if I didn’t know that.” 

Dean throws his hands up in frustration. “I’m trying to talk for once, Sam, and you’re—“

“Going for a walk. Need a little fresh air is all.” 

He grabs his jacket off the coat rack in the corner of the kitchen and throws it on, thankful that Dean isn’t following him.

Polio, he thinks as he walks up the stairs. Now that he’s out from under Dean’s careful scrutiny, he can see that Dean might be into something. Wounds that never get fixed, which means he’ll never get fixed.

~~~

_“Y’all ain’t Marshals, are ya? All that badge waving,” she snorts as she turns back to the fumes coming out of the pan on the stove. The onion smell is the only thing he can recognize so he stands clear. “You’re no different than all those other lawmen, coming in from outside. They show up every once in a while, cuz they think it’s their duty. They judge us poor and pitiful, tell us what’s right and what’s wrong but what’s family business is between family. It ain’t none of theirs and it ain’t none of yours.”_

~~~

Dean tracks down a case of what looks to be a pack of werewolves in the Upper Peninsula the next day. When he hesitates, Sam gives one of their road-tested speeches about how the best way through this is to keep going, keep hunting, and Dean gets bent about “quoting me to me again” but he’s still packing up the Impala an hour later.

Now, looking at his face in the mirror, Sam can see what made Dean pause. He grips the sides of the little porcelain sink and leans in to look at his reflection. A night’s sleep hasn’t done him any favors. His skin is pale and pink around his nose and eyes like a rabbit. The three scratches on his face are no closer to healing than they were three days ago. The last time he went through this, there was a goal behind his pain—he was fighting through it to close the gates of Hell. But now, there is just pain and nothing good will come out of it.

He runs the tap and cups the water in his hand, splashing it over his face. The cool water gives a moment of relief. When he reaches for the towel, he notices a smear of red on the white porcelain lip of the sink. He stares at it for a moment. Rust in the old pipes is a problem, but he knows it’s not that before he drags a finger through the fresh wet stain, before he flips his hand over to look at his palm.

“Dean!”

Not surprising that his brother makes it there in less than a minute.

When Dean comes sliding into view, Sam looks up from his hand where the edges of his old scar are raw and jagged and bleeding, the cuts from the broken glass as fresh as they were seven years ago. He examines his face in the mirror, pale and his eyes are ringed with white. Shock, he thinks remotely. This is what shock looks like.

Dean’s face over his shoulder in the mirror shows the same fear. “The hand thing?”

Sam nods and cradles his hand. Dean reaches for him, ready to make it better and Sam lets out a ragged noise that’s not quite a laugh.

“How is the hand thing back?” Dean starts to say more but bites it back when he looks in Sam’s face. “C’mon, let’s take care of this.” 

Sam is stuck. The weight of this thing has him anchored to the ground and his feet won’t move so Dean steps in and uses that moment to take hold of Sam’s elbow and guide him down the hall.

“What did Dad always tell us?” Confusion distracts Sam from staring at his hand. There’s a lot that their Dad told them. “When we got injured. Cmon, Sam, what did he say about treating wounds?”

Sam shakes his head.

“Apply pressure. Clean it. Dress it, right?” Dean says brightly, but his smile is shaky as he leads Sam into the infirmary and waves him over to the exam table. A drawer with gauze bandages is already open. _Oh, that’s right, the scratches on my face_ , Sam thinks remotely. _Was that yesterday or the day before?_

He sinks down on the blue padded bench. The raw wound on his palm forms a V, like before, when the Cage and reality mixed together in his head like yeast into raw dough. Panic rises into his throat like a physical thing. He can’t breathe around it. Dean’s lips are moving but Sam can’t hear the words that come out.

“Hey, hey, Sam. Look at me.” Words are still coming from Dean’s mouth, his voice calm and low as he washes off the wound and Sam focuses on his face. Dean’s good at this and a distant part of him thinks that in another life, his brother would have been a good EMT. In another life. “Why don’t you just lean back, okay?”

“I’m fine.”

But he shivers a tiny bit and Dean’s hands are firm and push him down flat on the bench. His head is elevated so he can watch and Dean is still talking about something, but Sam can’t focus and his eyes dart from the cabinet to the chair to the IV stand.

There’ve been worse injuries on cases, worse traumas in the Cage, but he’s able to compartmentalize those. He assigns reasons and timelines and sticks them in a far corner of his mind to forget. Right now, his anxiety is running loose like a bull in that house of cards.

“Sam?” Dean snaps his fingers in front of his face and their eyes connect. “We’ll figure this out. Okay?”

He nods. Despite all the things that have happened in his life, he’s moved on. It’s a requirement of the way they live. Otherwise, it threatens to drag them down and he’s been there before. At rock bottom with no hope. This scar was the only thing thing that kept him sane five years ago.

Sam looks at it now and sees his past laid out in front of him. So many injuries and wounds that took him down over the years and now they’re all coming back, surfacing again and the hand scar is the least of those. His eyes meet Dean’s and he knows they are wondering the same thing.

“Yeah, okay.”

~~~

He leaves Dean and promises to rest, but now he’s pacing the length of his room like a tiger in a concrete cage.

The Cage? Lucifer. He’s not sure why he didn’t think of it before. It’s as if the conversation with Rowena in the car and dragging bad memories out into the light caused this to happen. 

Something feels wrong though. The distance of it doesn’t feel like Lucifer. The archangel enjoyed having a front-row seat to any torture. But he’s changed since he got out of the Cage this time. He’s immersing himself in the world and could care less about Sam. Crowley locked him into Nick as a vessel so there’s nothing that he wants from Sam. He stops pacing when he realizes that’s not true.

Jack. 

Somehow he found out about Sam’s relationship with his son. Lucifer could be angry that Jack has disappeared, unaware that he has been shoved into the other universe or maybe he is and knows that Jack’s over there with Michael and blames Sam. 

The archangel has been a part of Sam’s life since the beginning. Manipulating him, how his life turned out, right up to that moment in Stull Cemetery. Wherever Lucifer is now, it looks like he’s back at the same game. 

He grabs the goose-necked lamp off the nightstand like he’s going to choke it with his one good hand and considers the satisfaction he would get from smashing it against the tiled wall, then sets it back down on the desk and sits on the edge of his mattress. 

His thumb finds the hand scar where it’s wrapped in a fresh bandage and he presses down, causing the blood to rise to the top of the white cotton and he closes his eyes.

_Look, man, I’ve been to Hell. Okay, I know a thing or two about torture. Enough to know that it feels different. Then the pain of this—this regular, stupid, crappy this._

The pain in his hand blooms fresh, and Dean’s words pierce his thoughts. 

_This is different. Right? Then the crap that’s tearing at your walnut? I’m different. Right?_

He lets his hand go and runs out of the room and into Dean who might have been lurking outside in the hallway. Dean grabs him by the arm, his face full of familiar concern.

“Hey, hey, slow down.”

“Dean, it’s not Lucifer.”

“Wait, you thought this was Lucifer?” Dean looks confused and then angry. “Are you seeing him again?”

Sam shakes his head no but his thoughts are racing ahead of what comes out of his mouth. The fact that his physical pain is so consistent is comforting in its own way. “Thought Lucifer was somehow in my head again but it’s not him. I know that now.”

Dean spots the now-bloody bandage wrapped around Sam’s hand and starts to unwind it. “Okay, not Lucifer. But we still don’t know what this is, Sam, or how bad it’s gonna get.”

Sam hisses as the cut is exposed to the air and the last of the gauze sticks to the edges of the cut. Dean leads him back down the hall to the infirmary and Sam is getting tired of the old whole routine.

“Should have told me what you were thinking. We promised not to keep things from each other, right?”

“Wasn’t sure what I thought.”

Dean doesn’t respond as he continues to cut off a new length of gauze and begins to rewrap Sam’s hand. When it’s done, he pats Sam’s leg to signal him to stand up. “Even if you’re not sure, you tell me what’s going on in your head. That’s how we solve cases, that’s how we’ll fix this. Tell me everything, even if it doesn’t seem like anything.”

“Okay,” Sam says and Dean looks relieved but when Sam doesn’t stand, his face gets pinched again and Sam shifts on the exam table. “Then you need to look at my shoulder.”

Sam rolls his left shoulder and flinches while Dean gives him a quizzical look.

“It’s starting to burn.”

~~~

_“When it comes to family, you’ll do anything,” the witch says. “When my two brothers were killed, a part of me died too. The good part. When my sons were killed, well, that’s when the rest of anything decent inside me died.”_

_~~~_

“Fucking Bela,” Dean says under his breath. 

What began as a mild ache quickly becomes a rash and then a wound that blooms slow and sticky like a rosebud on his shoulder over the next two days. Bela was right about one thing — she was a good shot and it was a clean through-and-through. 

Dean cleans the wound and stitches it up — again — this time wrapping it carefully with Saran Wrap when Sam says he wants to shower. 

Sam leans against the tiled shower room wall and watches as Dean pulls off his t-shirt and starts to strip down. Sam raises an eyebrow but Dean pushes him inside and starts up the spray. 

The water pressure is strong — one of the benefits of the Bunker’s group shower — and he runs his good hand through his hair to push it off his forehead. Showering in tiny old motel bathrooms was far from a luxury with cracked tubs and moldy grout, but they were the one place where they had privacy from each other, from before they were together like this.

Getting stitched up by Dean after a hunt was one of the first moments when Sam thought of his brother in that way. He wonders how much of it was the result of the attention Dean would give him when they got back to the motel room. Dean, who could hack through a monster with a machete and not blink and would smell like gunpowder after plinking tin cans off a log, was the same brother who would gently wash out Sam’s cuts and sew them together with careful stitches. Some days when Sam was growing up, those touches from Dean were what kept him together.

This wound brings back memories of that desperate want. Women like Bela would snag Dean’s attention and Sam would wonder each time, is this the one? The woman who deserves Dean and will finally take him away from Sam. He thought that was going to be Cassie, then he wondered if it might be Jo at some point. Someone who understood the life and could be Dean’s partner in all ways. Then Lisa came along and she was a good woman. That’s why Sam insisted that Dean go to her after all that happened that year. But these connections never lasted—Bela and Jo were gone, Cassie faded away and Lisa lives in Indiana, unaware of the year she spent with Dean—and Sam was still here.

His melancholy is tucked away when strong hands push him under the warm shower spray. The water stings his cuts when it first hits but as his skin heats up, his body relaxes. He sways a bit but Dean catches him and folds him in. Sam’s spine curls down and his forehead rests on Dean’s shoulder. 

“There you go,” Dean says as he runs a hand along Sam’s side. They stand long enough under the spray that Sam’s muscles loosen and the room begins to steam up. “Okay, let’s get you clean.”

Dean reaches for the soap and pushes him upright, and Sam makes a noise of protest but turns his face towards the shower head. He’s unsteady without Dean under him and braces himself with a hand against the cold tile. Dean doesn’t ask, he just starts to wash off Sam’s back and shoulders, carefully avoiding the wrapped shoulder. He turns Sam around to allow the water to rinse away the soap and with slick fingers begins to soap up Sam’s hair. Dean’s face has that intensity, just like when he sews up wounds, that this small task is the most important thing in the world, and Sam leans in for a kiss. Something sweet and clean that takes his mind away for the briefest of minutes.

Dean’s hands stop where they are in Sam’s hair and drop to his hips, and his eyes go wide before he kisses back. Sam sways with the contact as the blood leaves his head and arms, and Dean catches him and breaks the contact.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, gimpy,” Dean murmurs as he starts to rinse Sam off, sluicing the soapy water off his head and shoulders until it runs clear. Sam catches Dean’s wrists and leans back against the wet tiles, pulling Dean with him. He doesn’t ask anything but Dean concedes to another kiss.

Sam closes his eyes, appreciating the warmth of the water and Dean and the clean smell of the Ivory soap. Dean breaks the kiss and twists the water handle to off. Sam doesn’t open his eyes, afraid to break the bubble of comfort that surrounds him, but soon enough Dean is back with a towel to dry him off and the nerves throughout his body pick up the sparks of pain from his wounds. As if he could forget about them. His smile is bittersweet and Dean pauses.

“You doing okay?” he asks. “Stupid question, I know.” 

It’s only a few more minutes before he’s dry and a few more steps back to Sam’s bedroom. Dean leads him by the elbow down the hall, and Sam thinks he should say something but the words don’t come.

As Dean props Sam up on a few pillows on the bed, his thumb rubs soft circles along Sam’s shoulder, an old distraction technique from their father. “Want me to turn on a movie?”

Sam shifts further down the bed, his eyes now glued to the fan rotating above his bed, the blades casting shadows that appear and disappear with a rhythm Sam finds comforting and disturbing. “What I want is to figure this out. There’s no order to how these are happening and if things get worse—“

“I got a plan,” Dean says and Sam raises his eyebrows and waits for the rest, but Dean shakes off the unasked question. “Right now you need rest, then we’ll talk later. Okay?”

Sam nods and despite the exhaustion, he doesn’t shut his eyes. He listens as Dean walks out of the room and his footsteps echo down the tile hallway and he hears the ringtone of Dean’s cell phone.

“Yeah, I’m surprised to call you, too,” Dean replies back to whoever’s on the other end of the call. “Wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t important, so just pipe down. It’s about Sam.”

Sam shifts on his side to follow the conversation and his shoulder pain flares hot that he rolls onto his back with a sigh. He feels twin tugs of curiosity and frustration as Dean’s conversation moves down the hall but the Percocet is pulling him down and he closes his eyes as the whirling blades of the fan above his bed lull him to sleep.

~~~

Later that night, Dean checks in on him. It’s routine, something that John drilled into them when there are serious injuries during a hunt and you can’t go to the hospital. The light streams in from the hall and he stirs as Dean shakes his shoulder. “Hey, Sammy, how ya doing?” Dean goes to turn on the lamp and his eyes flick to where it sits on Sam’s desk now. “Need anything?”

Sam is cloudy and mute and starts to shake his head and then stops with a feeling that he’s buried under a pile of stones and the world keeps putting one on top of another— _or is it sticks? the straw that broke the camel’s back_ , he thinks. Tonight, he’s too tired to dig his way out. His silence is a magnet that draws Dean to the other side of the bed where he lies down beside him as much as the mattress will allow and settles a hand on Sam’s chest where his heartbeat is elevated and the rise and fall of his chest is shallow. 

“Breathe for me, Sammy,” Dean says. He curls an arm under his ear to prop himself up and look Sam in the face. Sam tries to obey, opening his lips to drag in a ragged gulp of air. “C’mon, breathe.”

He closes his eyes and focuses on the weight of Dean’s hand resting on his chest, getting it to rise and fall. After a few minutes, his body has loosened up and Dean murmurs encouragement. Sleep is about to take him when the mattress dips with Dean’s movement.

“No,” he says and pulls Dean back down. “Don’t go. Not tonight.”

Dean settles back into his spot next to Sam and begins to rub circles on Sam’s chest with his thumb while Sam continues to hold on to his wrist, keeping him close.

“It’s not Lucifer, Sam. He’s not here.”

“Yeah, I know—”

Dean nuzzles into Sam’s ear and if he wasn’t so tired, it might lead somewhere. “Get some sleep. I’m not going anywhere.”

~~~

_“My gran had the skills, more than me, and she helped people ‘round here. Childbirth, sickness, even those sick in love. She was powerful and look where it got her in the end—dead. Dead by a man who should have been family. I don’t have the skills she did but I took what she taught me and made sure that those who did wrong got what’s coming to them.”_

~~~

“Rowena? Are you crazy?” Sam says, pulling himself up against the headboard with a flinch.

The light from the hallway darkens Dean’s face but Sam can see the tensing of Dean’s jawline as he watches Sam struggle to sit up. To his credit, his brother doesn’t jump in to help.

“Not crazy.” Dean moves into the room, calm and quiet like he doesn’t want to spook Sam, which makes it so much worse. “We’re running out of time, Sam.” 

“Yeah, I know.” The words are a soft breath and a simple truth, and Sam can feel it deep in his bones. “But she won’t help. I’m destined to kill her, remember? Easier to let me suffer and die.”

Dean shakes his head and laughs. “I wondered that too. Only question she asked was about Lucifer. Wanted to know if he was involved in any way. Until she gets here, you stay put. Chicken soup and Netflix.”

Sam raises his hands in acquiescence and the bandage on his hand flashes white in the dim room. He stares at it and the patches of red that have soaked through when a small panic runs through his veins. He is so done with it. The rolls of gauze, the creeping pain, the incapacity of a curse that has them relying on Rowena of all people.

He wrestles the panic down and nods at Dean. “Sure, no problem.”

“Great. Catch up on your marine mammal documentaries or whatever you watch while I make some breakfast.”

~~~

Within four hours, the burn on Sam’s foot appears. It goes from an itch to a rash to blistered skin. With the original injury ( _torture_ , Dean reminds him as if he didn’t know, _you weren’t injured, you were tortured_ ), Sam put the pain inside a metal box buried deep in his mind the way Dad taught them. At the time it first happened, Dean didn’t have much chance to see the extent of it, dealing with Toni and then Mom’s rescue. After they left the Missouri farmhouse and the British Men of Letters, Cas stepped in quickly and healed Sam and it looked like nothing had ever happened.

Now, Dean cradles Sam’s foot in his lap as he rests against his headboard in bed. The burn is second-degree and runs the length of the foot from below his ankle to the hairless skin in front of his small toe. Sam cringes as Dean tries to dab the antibiotic ointment on it and Dean has to swallow past his anger.

“First, Bela. Then Toni. Women seem to have a hard-on for hurting you.” He finishes winding the gauze around Sam’s foot before wrapping his hand around Sam’s ankle. “How’s that feel? Never mind, don’t answer.” He starts to repack the first aid kit but stops. “And where is Cas? I’ve been praying and he’s nowhere to be found.”

Sam shrugs. “Sounds like heaven is a mess right now.”

“When isn’t it?” Dean shuts the lid to the kit. “He could pop down and save us a lot of time.”

The comment doesn’t hold much heat and Sam’s too tired to think much beyond closing his eyes. “We’ll figure out something.”

~~~

When Rowena blows in that night at half past midnight, her bag in one hand and her skirt train in the other, it’s a relief.

“You’re finally here,” Dean says, doing his best to sound annoyed.

“Had to leave Bernard behind which is a shame,” she says and drops the bag at the foot of the front stairs for Dean to carry. “He wasn’t happy about what you did to him last time we met.”

“Yeah, well, could have been worse,” Dean says.

Sam’s sitting up in the library, foot propped up on another chair. The thought of Rowena invading his bedroom was too much for him so Dean hauled him out to the library, careful to put his foot up on a pillow. Sam knows he’s a mess but Rowena’s sympathetic expression makes him feel even worse.

“You poor giant. Let’s see what’s going on here.” She feels his forehead and runs her fingers down his unmarked cheek, lingering too long to be motherly and Sam squirms under the attention. She leans in, speaking so quietly that Dean can’t hear. “You’re a mess, aren’t you? Perhaps you’ll remember this, Samuel. That I’m the one who’s going to save you.” She pats his cheek and turns to unpack her bag on the library table next to him.

Dean looks distressed at the vials and newspaper bundles that Rowena lays out and it makes Sam laugh for the first time in three days. 

“Don’t get your crap all over our table.”

She rolls her eyes and puts her hand on her hip. “So, what do we know?”

Sam pulls out a small notepad and hands it over to her. Once he put aside thoughts of the Trials and Lucifer, he narrowed it back down to the witch in West Virginia. He didn’t touch anything and Dean took her out before she could do whatever she was going to do, so he spent the last day thinking about what he saw and sketched out a few drawings from memory and a list of the miscellania that was hanging or sitting on the counters. She begins to run her finger down the list of items and Dean moves to look over her shoulder.

“This is from the granny witch’s house?” he asks, meeting Sam’s eyes.

“She’s dead so it wasn’t a typical hex bag,” Sam replies. “Gotta be something I triggered in there. Most of the herbs looked familiar to me.”

“Foxglove, blue cohosh. Pfft,” Rowena says. “These old women and their _small_ magic. Healing potions and poultices. Birthing babies and dowsing sticks.” She squints at Sam’s drawings and back up at his face. “What makes no sense is that these witches don’t usually inflict damage.”

Dean snorts. “Yeah, well, this little old lady caused plenty of damage. She hexed two huge dudes into gouging their own eyes out and slitting their throats.” He glances uneasily at Sam but his question is for Rowena. “But I shot her. Most curses end that way, right? With the death of the witch.”

Rowena glares at him for a moment before shrugging a shoulder. “Some, not all.” She hands the notepad back to Sam. “Walk me through what you saw in the cabin and what she said.”

There’s not much to say. Rowena for her part listens with an intensity that surprises him. At one point, she stands up and goes to the glass decanters of whiskey and scotch that sit on a sideboard and pours herself a scotch neat. When Sam pauses to watch her, she turns and gestures for him to continue. “Tell me about the men who died.”

The case came to their attention because of the deaths of two brothers in West Virginia. Doctors and detectives were stumped by the similar nature of their injuries and that they had each died in their own house behind locked doors within hours of each other. The family had a long-running and bloody feud with their cousins that stemmed back almost a hundred years to a fight between two brothers distilling moonshine far up in the Smoky Mountains. No one can remember how the feud started, just that generations of Tackets died bloody and what started with two brothers ended with two brothers. 

Only one family member was still alive, an aunt of the murdered men—Addilyn Tackett. 

Dean wasn’t sure if it was their kind of case, but was willing to check it out. Two things surprised them when they arrived at the small sheriff’s office in West Virginia. First was that the brothers’ wounds weren’t just similar but identical in every way. Second was how the sheriff and other townspeople didn’t seem too worried about catching the killer. 

“Sheriff told us not to bother Miss Addy about it,” Dean says. “Not sure if they were lazy or if they were glad the Deliverance twins were dead.”

“I’m assuming this Addy is the one you shot,” she says to Dean. “An old witch living alone up in the mountains? What a brave hunter you are.”

“Hey, that sweet old lady was a witch who killed more than two men—” Dean pushes off the table and starts towards her but she waves him off and he stops, puts his hands on his hips and hangs his head. “This isn’t a joke, Rowena. That witch did something to Sam and we need to stop it. Can you help or not?”

She takes another sip of scotch, studying Sam over the rim. “Of course, I can. If I want to. This type of magic comes from the same place as mine. A lot of the witches that left Scotland and Ireland centuries ago moved to that area. All that damp and the smell of pine, och.” She puts the tumbler down and studies Sam again. “Well, I can’t do anything for him here.”

Dean’s head whips up. “Why not?”

“Because the magic isn’t tied to the witch.” Dean’s brow crinkles as she continues. “These granny witches tap the power of nature for their spells. What we need to break the spell is likely back in her cabin or in the woods.”

“Guess we should get going then,” Sam says and pulls his leg down gingerly from the chair. When he tries to stand up, the leg crumples underneath him and he catches the edge of the library table with a grunt of pain.

Rowena watches as Dean supports Sam under his shoulder as they move towards the War Room. She takes another belt from the scotch and rolls her eyes. “Well, this should be fun.”

~~~

Dean pushes Sam in the back seat when he tries to sit shotgun and Sam’s too tired to protest. Dean found a plaid blanket in one of the Men of Letters closets and throws it around Sam’s shoulders then puts the med kit from the infirmary in the footwell. Rowena has enough self-preservation to wait for Dean to open the passenger door before delicately climbing in.

The red and blue wool is soft and warm, and even though it itches his neck for the first thirty minutes, Sam relaxes enough to lean his head back and close his eyes. This time he doesn’t dream of West Virginia woods but of the summer they spent at Bobby’s when he was six.

The giant field of wrecked cars stretches before them and Dean walks with a purpose in front of Sam with a small toolbox and a list of parts Bobby needs—a gear shift knob from a Chevy C10 truck, an alternator from a Dodge Dart. Sam marches behind him, his short legs doing double duty to keep up, clutching his paperback in his hands. It’s something from the Tolkien universe ( _The Two Towers_? he doesn’t remember) but he wants to read it and is impatient for Dean to stop walking. Finally, Dean drops the tool box next to a dirty blue and white truck and opens the hood. As Dean pokes around in the engine, Sam slips into the front seat. It sits higher than the Impala and he bounces on the springs for a minute before he notices the glove compartment hanging open. He leafs through old proof of insurance and DMV slips, flips a silver tire gauge in his fingers and pulls out the car’s manuals. Sam can’t see Dean with the hood up but he must have found what he needed. Stuck inside the pages of the manual is a yellowed sheet of paper, folded letter style, that looks old and Sam pulls it out. Instead of a grocery list or some checked off to-dos, it’s a handwritten note. 

Sam can’t read the writing but he knows that Dean needs to see it, that their father has a message for them, something urgent about people who need their help or maybe coordinates. But when he climbs out of the cab and runs around to the front, Dean is gone. Sam races through the maze of cars calling for his brother, waving the letter, but he is too short to see and there are too many cars.

Sam wakes up slowly to the gentle rumble of the Impala’s engine and Tom Johnston singing _Long Train Running_ on the speakers.

“Ach, there must be something else. Three hours of this is more than any human can stand,” Rowena complains.

“When you’re driving, you can pick the music.”

“So many other options to expand the mind, Dean. Classical, jazz, even the news would be preferable to this.”

“Not that many options in the middle of Missouri.” Sam hears Dean pop out the cassette and spin the tuner dial to make his point. There’s some static before It lands on an evangelical station, a preacher talking about saving your soul and donating money to the cause. Rowena huffs and punches the off-button.

“Fine. We could all do with a little silence.”

Sam doesn’t move, trying to enjoy that fuzzy intersection between awake and asleep with his pain still sitting outside of it, but even then Dean knows he’s awake.

“Sammy, you okay back there? A few more hours and we’ll get you fixed up,” he says.

He hums back in agreement. “Hey, Dean, remember walking through Bobby’s yard with me when we were kids?”

His words are mumbled thanks to sleep and the meds; Dean glances in the rearview mirror and then looks over his shoulder. “What?” 

“You were pulling parts and I was following you around. So much junk,” Sam says. “Always worried that you’d lose me. But you never did.”

There’s a pause. “Of course, I wouldn’t lose you, Sam.” 

He closes his eyes and sinks into the blanket once again. 

After another minute of silence, he hears Dean whispers to Rowena, “You better make this work.”

~~~

They drove through the night arriving at the trail head shortly after sunrise.

It took an hour to find the cabin the first time. With Sam’s gimp foot, the progress is excruciating but Rowena, despite her impractical shoes seems to be keeping up.

About halfway there, Dean stops them so that Sam can sit down on a log while Rowena is examining some of the plants on the forest floor. He shifts at the persistent twinge in his back, and after a few quiet minutes listening to the birdsong in the surrounding forest, he sucks in as deep a breath as he can of the clean air.

“When you find her, tell Mom—“

“Oh no, I’m not telling Mom anything for you. You can tell her yourself once we fix you and get Mom and Jack back.”

Sam gives him a long look and Dean throws himself into pulling Sam up and readjusts his hold under Sam’s shoulder as they start to walk again through the trees.

“And don’t think you’re leaving me alone with Jack. I didn’t sign on to be a single parent to Lucifer’s kid.”

“You won’t be by yourself, there’s Cas.”

The muscle in Dean’s jaw twitches. “Fat lot of good Cas is doing us right now.”

“Dean, you know he’s doing the best he can—” Sam stops, his words cut off as his back twinges in pain and then tries to start again. “Heaven—”

“—is another problem for another day,” Dean finishes and starts them walking again. “Cas can handle it. It’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. Let’s focus on you right now.”

They walk up as Rowena stands up and she gives Sam a once-over and a smile. “It’s a sad thing when a three-hundred-year-old witch is making better progress than you.”

“Shut up,” Dean growls. “Let’s just keep moving.”

~~~

_“Well, go on. Shoot me. I’ve done what needed to be done. Those men killed off my family. Now they’re dead. There was a purpose to the end of my life. But you?” She examines Sam with a pained look. “You just stumbled into this. What a waste.”_

_She scoops up some powder from a dish and holds it in front of her mouth. Sam recoils as Dean bursts in, his gun held high._

~~~

Despite the shambles of the outside, the cabin is small and clean, crowded with bundles of herbs hanging from drying pegs in the rafters. It looks chaotic and Sam is reminded of Bobby’s library in Sioux Falls.

Rowena lets her fingers graze the bottom of the bundles and along the top of the table before she picks up a small doll, years old with its yarn hair and cotton dress in tatters. Straight pins and needles stick out of it like bristles on a porcupine, and she hums as she pulls one out and holds it up to the light.

“Found something?” Dean says. He opens the grate to a small cast-iron stove and looks inside with a scowl, disappointed the answer wasn’t sitting inside with the ashes and bones. He stands up and eyes the doll. “Is it some kind of voodoo doll?”

“No,” Rowena says and shakes her head. “This kind of hill magic isn’t voodoo.”

“Okay,” Dean responds gruffly. “But does it mean something?”

“Perhaps.” She walks closer to the window for more light, pulling out more needles and laying them on the counter where they lie sharp and shiny side by side.

“Well, come up with something quick.” Dean glances over his shoulder at where Sam sits close to the cabin door, wrapped in their car blanket. “You okay?”

“No different than when you asked last time.” Sam squirms in the chair. He knows his face is a pale replica of how he looked two days before and he can’t sit still with the humming pain moving along his nerves to drill down between his shoulder blades.

After a quick look, Dean stays on point and continues to search the cabin, opening the few drawers and cabinets in the simple furnishings. One slim drawer keeps his attention and he pauses before reaching inside.

“Rowena, look at this,” he says and hands her a slip of yellowed paper. She takes it and squints, Dean peering over her shoulder. “Can you read that?”

“Well—“ She starts but Sam doesn’t hear the rest. The pain in his back blooms red hot, and he gasps and arches, as the blanket around his shoulder slides to the ground and he falls to his knees.

“Sammy?” He can feel Dean’s arms slide around him, trying to hold him up, but he can’t focus on anything. When Dean’s hand touches beneath his shoulder blades, the pain’s enough to make him want to pass out. 

“No, no, not this.” Sam can’t tell if it’s his voice or Dean’s. He opens his eyes to see Dean staring at a blood smear across his palm. It rings some terrible bells in his memory. Cold Oak. Stumbling towards Dean and safety, despite his useless broken arm dangling down, and then Jake and a white-hot ball of pain. 

So, this is it, the final wound. He knew it was a matter of time before this would happen. 

Like the other wounds across his body, this one has surfaced slowly but inevitably and it gives Sam time to feel regret sitting at the edge of his panic. _Dean doesn’t deserve to live through this twice_.

He grabs Dean’s shoulder to bring him closer. “Dean, don’t do anything—”

“Stupid?” Dean unleashes a brittle laugh but tries to reassure Sam with a watery smile.

“Dean,” Rowena says, but Dean is oblivious to her. His eyes are wild as he holds Sam’s face. It doesn’t provide any relief that this isn’t playing out like it did in that cold, rainy dirt road. 

“Sammy, gotta stay with me.”

Sam speaks through clenched teeth as another twinge of pain runs up his spine. “I’m here.” 

“Dean!” Rowena’s voice rises higher as she shakes his arm and Dean looks at her, lost and angry at the intrusion, but she won’t stand down and shakes him again. “I think I know what this is—I think I can fix it.”

~~~

Dean makes it clear to Rowena that he won’t leave Sam inside the cabin and out of his sight. Despite the urgency of the situation, they wrap Sam in an old quilt and Dean walks him out by the shoulders while Rowena trails behind. Sam’s small hurt noises seem to land on Dean like a boxer’s punches and he flinches as they lay Sam down on his side on the rough boards of the porch. Dean sways when he stands up, unsure until Rowena calls out to him to pull it together and he snatches a small spade leaning against the side of the cabin to follow her down the steps.

The quilt smells of lavender and cedar from the old wooden storage bench and for a minute he worries whether the blood that stains it. 

He half listened to what Rowena said inside to Dean about needle magic, how it could be used to curse someone and that the granny witch who had so little in the way of possessions spent good money to buy brand new golden-eye needles. In his mind’s eye, he could see her holding the doll and talking about ripping out seams and smiling the whole time. 

Maybe she’ll return as a ghost so that Dean could kill her all over again.

Rowena is directing Dean to dig along the base of the steps that lead up to the cabin and glances up at him. When she sees that he is watching, Rowena gives a tight smile. Despite the pain, he smiles back. They are locked together in this strange bond that neither would have chosen and now he has to leave his life in her hands. That should worry him, that the one person who should want him dead to save her own life is working side by side with his brother, but it doesn’t. 

“There, right there, where people walk across the threshold,” she says and points at the ground. “There should be nine laid out in a line.”

Dean is flipping out spadefuls of dirt, cursing as he examines each one before tossing it aside. “How deep?”

“I don’t know how bloody deep, you ape,” Rowena snaps as she gathers her skirts to crouch down next to the turned earth.

Dean glares at her and then glares at the ground. “How am I supposed to see a bunch of buried needles in the dirt?” 

The pain across Sam’s body tightens into a net at that moment, surrounding and constricting him all over, and he groans and hunches further into a fetal position on the edge of the porch so he can continue to watch them work. Dean meets his eyes for a moment. His mouth opens to say something but he closes it again to attack the remaining areas of unbroken earth while Rowena sorts through the clods with her long white fingers while dodging the edge of Dean’s spade.

Watching his brother’s frenzy, he feels light-headed and disconnected. He wonders how quickly Billie will show up. Her threat of throwing him in the Empty is white noise compared to the immediacy of his death. But in the end, the Empty doesn’t matter. What matters is that he and Dean are together. 

Then, like the soft pop of a bubble, the curse is broken. 

The net of pain that was holding him tight is cut and the bones and muscles that were riddled with pain relax. He takes a deep breath, closing his eyes. His shirt still sticks to the blood on his back and the cuts and bruises still ache but it’s just pain. Normal pain. Whatever supernatural force was pushing it to the surface is gone and he falls back on the porch in relief.

“Sammy!” 

His eyelids are too heavy to lift but he can hear Dean running up the cabin steps and feel him kneeling beside him.

“Sam, wake up.” Dean’s warm hands prop up his head and run through his hair. “No, no, no. Wake up, okay?” Dean slaps his cheek lightly but it’s enough to wake him up from the overwhelming exhaustion he feels. 

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” he mumbles and looks up in Dean’s worried eyes right before he’s pulled into a tight hug. Past Dean’s shoulder, he can see Rowena, waiting for some kind of confirmation that the spell was broken. Sam nods at her and mouths the words _thank you_ over Dean’s shoulder.

“You Winchesters are like cockroaches, aren’t you? Not easy to kill. Guess someone should have told that old witch not to leave her curses lying around.”

Dean pulls back and cups Sam’s face, runs his thumbs over the still-tender scratches on his cheekbone. “They’re not getting better.”

“They are. I can feel it.” He pats Dean’s forearm. Sam looks past him to where Rowena is walking up the cabin steps, lifting her skirts carefully, trying not to call attention to herself, and he smiles. She will pick through the old witch’s supplies and spells, stuffing a few useful items into her bag. He remembers the old witch’s words from that first time as Dean pulls him to his feet and smiles.

 _“It starts with two brothers. It ends with two brothers.”_ It did. It also started with a witch and it ends with one.

Dean goes to help him walk but Sam waves him off and stands on his own, letting the quilt drop to the rough boards of the porch. He puts pressure on his burnt foot and the throbbing is gone, and he walks more confidently inside. His instincts were right; she is smelling some of the dried herbs that hang on strings from the ceiling and untying a bunch, wrapping it in a dish towel.

Sam clears his throat and she ignores the sound and going onto the next bunch. When he shuffles his feet, she turns with a sigh. “What, Samuel?”

“Thank you.” 

She dips her eyelashes once and then turns back to the herbs. “Let’s just say we’re even. A blank slate.” 

“Blank slate. Sounds good.” He steps up to her and for a moment, she looks startled then relieved as he wraps her in a hug. It only last a moment before she squirms out of his arms like a cat and picks up what looks like a recipe box off the counter and tucks it in her bag. 

“Och, if you and that brother of yours would kindly drop me off at the nearest airport, then I’ll be out of your hair.” She begins to head for the door and he reaches out to hold her back.

“Lucifer is still out there. We may need you.”

She cocks her head to look up at him. “Ahhh. Perhaps you don’t understand the meaning of blank slate, Samuel? I don’t owe you anything now.” She swirls through the cabin door bumping into Dean who’s walking in. Dean waits a moment for her to walk down the stairs before he turns to Sam. 

“Everything okay?” When Sam nods, Dean looks around the small cabin. “Maybe we should torch this place. Make sure the old lady didn’t leave any more booby traps lying around.”

Sam looks at the framed pictures of Miss Addy’s family and the handmade quilts that sit on the chest at the foot of her bed. The remnants of her happy life are left behind with no one to pass it along to. Suddenly Sam wants more than anything to be back in the Bunker with his brother.

“Let it go. Some other hunter can come back and take care of it.”

As they walk out of the cabin, Rowena is climbing in the back of the Impala and settling her bag on the seat next to her. She smooths long curls back into place and Dean makes a face.

“What are we going to do with her now?”

Sam shrugs. “We drop her at the Knoxville airport.” When Rowena meets his eyes through the window, Sam nods but he can’t read the expression on her face. Dean tugs his sleeve to get his attention and helps him down the stairs. Dean starts to open the door and pauses.

“You know, she’s pulled a lot of crap on us in the past,” Dean says. “Still not sure I trust her but I guess this is a good start.”

“Yeah, we all deserve second chances,” Sam replies. “Even a witch.” 

Dean nods and opens the passenger for Sam to climb in. “I’m good with that. But if she complains about my music again, I might have to think twice.”

**Author's Note:**

> I took a few liberties talking about Appalachia and granny witches. If you want to know more about [needle magic](https://littlechicagoconjure13.wordpress.com/2017/10/27/needle-magic-in-appalachia/), this is interesting.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Artwork for Old Wounds by WetSammyWinchester!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17211353) by [millygal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/millygal/pseuds/millygal)




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